As digital commerce picks up the pace, businesses must adapt to stay competitive. If your organization is currently hosting Adobe Commerce on-premise or on Adobe’s Managed Cloud, platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering, you may be grappling with challenges like infrastructure management, version upgrades, and unpredictable scaling costs. The newly released Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering provides a solution that addresses these issues while empowering your business to innovate and grow.
This platform represents a significant shift to a fully managed, version-less SaaS model. It offers enhanced performance, scalability, simplified operations, and tighter integration with the broader Adobe Experience Cloud. Making the move goes beyond a technical upgrade. It’s a strategic shift that redefines how you manage and deliver e-commerce experiences.
Transitioning to the new platform presents an opportunity for your business to streamline operations and enhance customer engagement. In this post, we’ll explore the unique features of Adobe’s new SaaS offering and how can seamlessly migrate to a platform that is designed to be a valuable asset to your business.
What Makes Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service Different?
More than just an update of Adobe Commerce, this platform is specifically designed for the cloud. Here’s a comparison:
- Adobe Commerce on-premise: The merchant manages all infrastructure, application code, upgrades, patching, and required services (application servers, MySQL, search, monitoring, security, and others).
- Adobe’s Managed Cloud, platform-as-a-service (PaaS): Adobe hosts the environment, and merchants manage application code, upgrades, patching, and some infrastructure configurations. This offering follows a shared responsibility model for services (monitoring, security, and others).
- Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, software-as-a-service (SaaS): Adobe fully manages the core application, infrastructure, and updates. Merchants focus on customization via extensibility points (APIs, App Builder, UI SDKs), and the core application code is locked.
Powerful Architectural Benefits
Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service offers flexibility, scalability, and efficiency by enabling businesses to deliver and rapidly scale digital operations and accelerate innovation. Adobe’s cloud-native infrastructure automatically adjusts resources to meet peak demands for traffic, orders, and catalog management. Key architectural benefits include:
- Optimized infrastructure and automatic scalability: Adobe manages performance, security, and reliability, allowing you to focus on your business and seamlessly handle traffic spikes without manual intervention.
- Zero-downtime updates: Continuous updates mean no more major version upgrades for the core, enabling you to stay current with the latest features without disrupting your operations.
- Microservices and API-first: Deeper reliance on APIs for extensibility and integration, including API Mesh for extending API functionality and support for serverless applications within Adobe Developer App Builder, helping you to streamline development and integration with third-party systems.
- Edge delivery services: Offering unmatched front-end speed and performance and simplified development and deployment process, including faster page load times, improved SEO rankings, reduced bounce rates, increased conversions and support for decoupled storefronts.
Enhancements to Store Management Capabilities
Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service introduces enhanced store management capabilities that go beyond what’s available in on-premise or managed cloud implementations. These features are designed to streamline operations, improve performance, and give business users more control, without additional licensing costs. Key enhancements include:
- Digital asset management and product visuals: A robust digital asset management (DAM) system built with Adobe Experience Manager makes it easy to manage rich media assets across the storefront. Included at no additional cost, this system improves visual merchandising and ensures consistency across channels.
- Enterprise content management: A full-fledge, enterprise-ready content management system (CMS) allows teams to create and manage storefront content easily using document authoring or a Visual Editor. Native support for testing and optimization is also included, reducing reliance on third-party tools.
- Catalog service and composable catalog data model: A high-performance, read-only service powers storefront product discovery and offloads backend systems. This abstraction layer boosts performance, enables AI-driven merchandising, and supports a “peel-off” architecture for headless or decoupled frontends.
- Integrated payment services: Adobe’s built-in payment capabilities simplify checkout and reduce operational overhead by handling payment orchestration, security, and performance without requiring additional third-party services.
- Frontend tools and SDKs: Edge Delivery Services and new UI SDKs simplify how storefronts are built, deployed, and managed—enabling faster frontend performance and easier customization.
Designed for Innovation and Faster Deployment
Migrating to Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service is about moving faster, operating leaner, and preparing for what’s next. Here are four results you can expect:
- Faster deployment cycles: Stay ahead with weekly feature releases and automated pipelines that reduce downtime and accelerate time to market.
- Lower total cost of ownership (TCO): Eliminate infrastructure overhead and upgrade complexity, freeing up teams to focus on more value.
- Enhanced customer experience: Utilize advanced personalization tools and improved asset management to drive deeper engagement with customers.
- Future readiness: Designed for innovation, position your business to scale quickly and adapt in a cloud-first world.
Harnessing the Power of Adobe’s Agentic AI
One of the standout features of Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service is access to Adobe’s agentic AI capabilities, designed to optimize key areas of your commerce operations. These intelligent agents work autonomously to enhance your e-commerce operations by:
- Automating product recommendations: Delivering personalized shopping experiences in real time based on customer behavior and intent.
- Streamlining inventory management: Optimizing stock levels and reduce manual oversight.
- Enhancing customer insights: Leveraging predictive analytics to better understand behavior, improve segmentation, and increase conversion.
These AI features are deeply integrated into the cloud-native architecture, enabling your teams to shift from reactive to proactive strategies. This ultimately enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty.
A Strategic Approach to Migration
Migrating to Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service requires careful planning and execution to ensure long term success. Here’s how you can make it happen:
- Assess your current environment: Evaluate your existing platform to identify customizations, deprecated APIs, and areas for optimization.
- Modernize your codebase: Refactor and modularize your code to align with Adobe’s extensibility model and SaaS best practices.
- Utilize Adobe’s migration toolkit: Leverage tools like the Bulk Data Migration Tool to streamline migrating first-party core commerce data.
- Test early and often: Implement rigorous testing cycles to catch issues early and ensure a seamless launch.
- Empower your teams: Provide training and documentation to help your teams adapt to new workflows and tools with confidence.
Choosing the Best Migration Path
Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service supports multiple migration paths depending on your timeline, storefront complexity, and level of customization. Working with a partner like Concentrix can help you evaluate the best approach for your business.
For many merchants, a phased migration makes sense, and Adobe offers flexible options to support this approach.
- Incremental migration: Transition your data, customizations, and integrations in stages. This approach is ideal for larger merchants with complex systems who want to migrate at a controlled pace while minimizing risk.
- Commerce optimizer: Use Commerce Optimizer as a transitional step to adopt key SaaS capabilities, like Catalog Channels, Edge Delivery storefronts, and AEM-powered Product Visuals, while gradually moving toward a full SaaS model.
- Full migration: This approach involves migrating all data, customizations, and integrations at once. This approach is ideal for smaller merchants with few customizations who want to quickly transition to this innovative service.
Future-Proof Your E-Commerce Strategy
Migrating to Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service is about positioning your business for future success. Concentrix specializes in helping brands navigate this migration journey, ensuring minimal disruption and maximum impact. Whether you’re ready to start today or planning for the future, we’re here to support you every step of the way. Get in touch with our Adobe Commerce experts to learn more about how we can help you thrive in the cloud.
